


Entropy

by levendis



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Emotional Constipation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag, F/M, Fluff and Angst, cuddlecore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-24 01:02:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4899520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the difficulties of running away with nowhere to run to. Post-"The Witch's Familiar".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Entropy

Clara Oswald has things to do.

Somewhere, Kate Stewart is expecting a phone call. Elsewhere, paperwork. Situation reports, essays, Facebook invites, improving non-fiction piling up unread on her bookshelves. Somewhere disaster unfolding. Other places: monsters. Sunrises, sunsets, supernovae. Clara could be anywhere, should be everywhere.

And they are here, which is nowhere. And nothing is happening. Nothing continues to happen.  Turns out the TARDIS loses a slight bit of its magic when it’s stuck in the vortex.

“She’s always a bit tetchy after a dispersal,” the Doctor says. “Not all of the pieces come back the exact same way as before. Not everything _fits_.”

“How long til it’s fixed?” She doesn’t mean to sound impatient, even if she is, but she does.

Going by how he’s fidgeting, she’s not the only one itching to move on. Small comforts.

“Not really something that can be fixed, as such. It’s a, a process that needs to happen. It’ll happen. We just have to wait.” He puts his hands in his pockets, and takes his hands out of his pockets, and then puts them back in his pockets, and gives her a look that is too intense, too much. He catches himself - a neutral expression, now - he takes his hands out of his pockets.

This love is a heavy thing, sometimes. Heavy and unwieldy, and all those moving parts. It's hard to look at let alone carry. Especially when all she wants to do is run, and all she can do is nothing. Sit on her hands and wait it out.

“Tea, in the meantime? It’s been a while since either of us ate. And it’ll help pass the time.”

“Yeah, food, that’s a thing, isn’t it. Although I should warn you, I don’t have much in stock at the moment.” He waits for her to make the move towards the corridor, an after-you gesture.

 

Clara’s more objectively aware of the fact that she should be hungry, considering she hasn’t eaten anything since the biscuits on the UNIT jet, than she actively wants to eat anything.

But maybe that’s what the knot in her stomach is, hunger. Maybe that’s all it is.

The refrigerator is mostly mustard. Yellow mustard, spicy mustard, honey mustard, fancy whole-grain mustard. An elderly banana lurking in the crisper drawer. Dijon, Colman’s English, New York deli-style.

The Doctor is slouched down on a chair, half-under the table, looking at her look at his mustard collection. He is, presumably, noticing how long she’s taking to make certain there’s nothing here she missed.

She takes a deep breath and closes the door, turns around with a firmly-affixed expression of disapproval. “You have a condiment problem.”

“There are worse problems to have. Although I suppose we do raise the bar. For problems. Hah.”

He’s struggling to find away around the thing she is resolutely not addressing. He’s floundering. She’s not in a position or a mood to help, and he can deal with it, he can figure it out his own damn self.

Most of the things in the cupboards aren’t even food, or food-related. She pulls out a pair of flip-flops, a VHS copy of _The Toxic Avenger_ , a coffee tin that turns out to be filled with bolts and washers.

“I think we should talk.”

“Are you certain this isn’t Bizarro-World, because I’m starting to wonder - instant ramen? Really?” She hops down from the counter, tosses the packages in front of him. “2,000 years old and you eat like a 20-year-old student. This stuff’s got more sodium than the Dead Sea.”

“If you can acknowledge that I’m literally older than most dirt, surely you can find it in you to accept that I’m above such pedestrian concerns as hypertension.” He picks one of the packs up, toys with it, spinning it around and around, balanced on the tips of his fingers.

She’s watching his hands, and it’s too quiet again, and if her two options are panic or ramen - she chooses ramen. Water on the boil, the package snatched out of the Doctor’s grasp. Instructions read, re-read. Special Flavoring Sachet set carefully aside, scissors at the ready.

“We don’t have to talk. Probably shouldn’t talk about it, come to think of it, neither of us are all that good at that sort of thing. You’re putting the shrimp in with the chicken?”

“Personally I think the tasteless pink bits balance really nicely with the tasteless grey bits. It doesn’t matter, Doctor, it’s just. It’s soup, okay.” Here’s where her hand starts to shake, of course, white-knuckling the novelty squid-shaped whisk. Everything that’s happened and it’s the soup that does her in. But she pulls it together, and she completes all the soup procedures, pours them both a bowl. Spoons and napkins and the basket-of-fake-fruit centerpiece dusted off, adjusted.

“Ramen’s not all that bad if you add some fresh veg, crack an egg in, spruce it up a bit. Shame you’re so aggressively bachelor about grocery shopping. Why do you have so much mustard, anyway?”

“Honestly? Not sure. It just keeps accumulating. Anyway, about that whole not-talking stroke talking thing.”

She glares at him over her spoon. 

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he says, entirely too flippantly.

“So we’re doing innuendos now too, huh. Been a real roller-coaster with you today.”

“We’re doing admissions of vulnerability now. And jokes, to ease the tension.” He pushes his untouched bowl of soup aside, lays his hands flat on the table.

It’s a deliberate pose, something affected about it. She wonders if it means something, the way everything he does and says _means_ something in a language she doesn’t speak, another piece of himself or his culture he keeps obscured from her. She’d like to think that the look in his eyes is unguarded, but who’s to say? They’re so very good at lying to each other.

“You want me to admit that - that what happened, it affected me. Is that it? You want to remind me it’s okay to be scared. ‘You don’t need to act like I do in order to be a hero’.” That last bit in a frankly awful imitation of his accent.

He doesn’t take the bait. For once, he doesn’t. He just sits there, very still, something impossibly soft about his face. “I want you to feel comfortable enough with me to think about what it is you’re doing,” he says quietly.

The one time she doesn’t want him to be kind. Great timing, dude.

She’s incredibly clever, of course she knows what’s happening. She’s making it worse, is what she’s doing. Consider Clara Oswald, keeping herself on a tight leash, yanking the chain til she chokes. Losing control to the fear of losing control. _That’s how they reload._

“Yeah. Um.” She smiles shakily and shoves a spoonful of soup into her mouth. Which is where she starts crying, obviously, while eating lukewarm noodles.

He’s hugging her again. He does that now, apparently. Crouched down and awkwardly splayed across her, chin resting on her head. She sniffs, and giggles blearily, and tries to work out the phlegm still stuck in her throat.

“Question,” he says softly.

“Oh, what now.”

“Would you be offended if I said I didn’t want to eat the soup?”

She giggles again and gently pushes him off, patting at her face to salvage whatever’s left of her makeup. “Not in the slightest. It’s not working for me either. Maybe we’re meant to be eating hot dogs, maybe that’s what the mustard’s about.”

“The moment has been prepared for,” he intones solemnly, wincing as he straightens up. “I think I can coax the old girl out of the vortex, with a little bit of delicate jiggery-pokery. D'you mind doing the washing up?”

“Yes, I do. No dishes, not for me, not now.”

“Right, fine, just leave it, it’ll probably go away on its own.” He wheels around and grins, points at her, finger-guns cocked. “Control room. Five minutes. No, ten. Ish. Be there or be square.” He slips through the door and down the corridor, going possibly a little faster than is strictly required.

“Using outdated slang does not make you cool,” she yells after him.

“Everything I do is cool.” Not looking back, peace sign flashed over his shoulder.

She waits for him to turn the corner, and then another minute after that.

“I love you,” she whispers. Just to hear what it sounds like.


End file.
